Clean the Edges

Sometimes we get so focused on being more creative, or challenging ourselves to see things different, we can lose sight of some of the fundamentals of photography. I recently did just that – submitting an image to a vendor for printing and completely missed doing some post production work on the edges. Luckily, the vendor noticed it for me, contacted me and let me know about the edges, and quite tactfully too!

“Hi Jason, we received your order for printing, thanks so much for your continued patronage. Before sending to print though, we wanted to check and make sure the image is as you wanted it because of some items near the corners that caught our eye. Do you want these items in the frame? let us know and we’ll proceed accordingly. Thanks so much!

What an awesome email, and in fact, I did not want the edge distractions. So, in getting a reminder myself, decided it would make a good blog post for the day. Here’s the final image I sent out to the vendor for printing:

It’s a nice image, and I am testing a few shots in some frames to see how a series might look together, so this is one I wanted to add. However, if they had proceeded before I made edits, this is what would have gone through:

See the distracting elements? I missed them the first time! The lesson here is that it helps to have a checklist before printing too, and to include “clean the edges” in your checklist. I think I am going to put one together here soon. With that in mind, what sorts of experiences have others had in pre-printing stages? Do you use a checklist to make sure you’ve done everything you need to do? What would you include? What would you leave to the lab? I know a lot of folks let the lab do final edits on things like color correcting, white balance, and even cropping, while others like to maintain end to end control over their imagery.